Night of the Living Brain-Suckers

I’m convinced children learn by osmosis. I think it goes beyond just learning from being near us. Right out of a classic zombie movie, I think they are after our brains. It must be while we sleep. My two-year-old is getting so much smarter every day while I’m seriously losing any mental acumen I ever had. My kids sometimes have to explain the Sunday comics to me, and they are the only ones who know how my phone works. And there was something else…oh, yeah. Forgetfulness.  I can’t find the words I’m looking for right in the middle of a sentence. Too often I find myself with the fridge door open and no idea why I’m standing here.  My kids are stealing my brain power. How else can you explain that they know where I put my keys?

Need further proof that something sinister is going on? By the time I was a teenager I was the smartest person in the world, and my parents were idiots. Now I’m headed down that path at an uncontrollable speed. My oldest turns twelve this week and my second will be ten very soon. At this rate there’s going to be nothing left of my brain for my 2 year old to feed upon.

So with Thanksgiving just around the corner I find myself in gratitude to those early Anglo Saxon pagans for inventing Halloween and giving my poor mind a reprieve at least for a few weeks while my kids feast on candy rather than my brain cells.

Todd Tuell is a work-from-home freelance writer and father of three. His joy is in watching his kids (way better than TV) and in writing fiction for children and teens. He seeks (and occasionally finds) rare moments of peace and clarity at the bottom of a coffee cup (first thing in the morning), in distance running (never first thing in the morning) and with the perfect ending to a novel (late-late at night).

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